Bitter Blood (58 page)

Taki was of Japanese origin, and Susie enjoyed talking with her about Japanese culture and Oriental cooking. Taki had promised to cook one of Susie’s favorite meals for dinner, and that afternoon, after helping Susie straighten her apartment, Taki set about putting the kitchen in order for the meal.

Taki made an asparagus salad with sesame oil. She steamed broccoli and whipped up a spicy dish of ground beef, onions, tofu, and bean paste served over rice. For dessert, she had fresh strawberries.

As they ate, Taki began talking about Bob and Florence. She hadn’t mentioned the murders earlier, and neither had Susie, but now Taki brought up the subject.

“Who in the world could kill such nice people?” she asked.

Nobody said anything, and the question was left hanging.

After dinner, John and Jim nestled under Taki’s arms and hugged her.

“We’re so glad you’re here,” Jim said.

“Yeah,” said John. “Thank you for a yummy dinner.”

Fritz and Annie Hill left soon afterward, and Susie and the boys drove Taki back to Susie’s parents’ house.

Taki planned to stay several more days. Susie said that she had to study all day Sunday for a test on Monday, but she wanted Taki’s assistance in sorting some of her mother’s things later. Taki said she would be glad to help.

“I’ll see you Tuesday,” Susie said cheerily as she left for home.

Ian took deep, nervous breaths, trying to calm himself. The recorder strapped to his back took note.

This was Sunday, June 2, a little after noon, and Ian was about to try once again to trap Fritz into admitting he’d murdered the Newsoms. His first attempt the day before had proved less than successful. It had confirmed his hard-to-believe story of the supposed CIA mission, but it had brought out no hard evidence about the Newsom deaths. The detectives were concerned that in court Fritz might be able to explain the whole thing away, and with their lack of physical evidence the case might be lost.

“We wanted to do everything possible to get a perfect case,” Gentry recalled later. “We were being very, very careful trying to make all the right moves, to do everything we could to make a good, solid case.”

After Saturday’s tense meeting between Ian and Fritz, the detectives had taken Ian back to Winston-Salem, where they decided that a second attempt would be necessary. For this, they concocted a story Ian was to tell Fritz that the detectives had returned to talk to him Saturday night at his mother’s house. They had asked him to accompany them to Winston-Salem, and they took him past the scene of the murders. Not only had he realized that it was just up the hill from where he had let Fritz out on the night of their mission, he had seen in the driveway at Nanna’s house the car Fritz had been driving when he was stopped by the police.

This time the detectives planned to have the meeting take place at Carolina Circle Mall at Greensboro’s northeastern edge on U.S. 29, the main highway between Greensboro and Reidsville. The surveillance cars were already spread out around the mall when the officers discovered that no outside telephone booth was handy from which to call Fritz. They had to drive a short distance up Cone Boulevard to the O. Henry Shopping Center before finding one. Ian reached Fritz at Susie’s apartment. Something had come up, Ian told him. The cops had come for him again. They had taken him to Nanna’s house. He needed to talk right away.

“Where are you?” Fritz asked.

“I’m at the Zayre’s store on Cone Boulevard,” Ian answered.

“Stay right there,” Fritz said. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Fritz’s impulse caused the surveillance cars to be moved hurriedly into new positions, and this time the officers had no notice of Fritz’s progress because the SBI airplane was grounded with a flat tire.

Now Ian, who seemed even more nervous than the day before, waited with Carden, who was again posing as his friend Chris. The day was hot, and Ian sweated as he waited, trying to remember all of the specific points the officers had instructed him to bring up. One of those points was Susie. Another was Fritz’s medical credentials. A third was the mission to Texas. From the time Ian had told them that the original mission was to Texas, the detectives figured that it really was to New Mexico to kill Tom Lynch. They wanted to know if Fritz still had that in mind.

Fritz took nearly twenty minutes to arrive, and when he pulled into the parking lot, Ian got out of the Mustang, leaving Carden watching from behind the wheel. Ian took several deep breaths to brace himself and quickly approached the Blazer.

“Really scared the shit out of me last night,” he said after crawling inside. “Tell you what. Showed me the house. I saw the gold car and went in the house. It was a mess. It was right down the road from where I dropped you off.

“I believe we were on a government mission, but I think there’s something that just ain’t kosher here. I’d just like to know what’s going on. I’m going to stick with the story.”

“Gold car,” Fritz said deliberately. “What gold car did they show you?”

“The one you had.”

“The car I had was brown,” he said with subtle sternness.

“They showed me a car. It was right down the road from where I let you off. That scared me. I didn’t know what was going on then. I didn’t know what to think. I don’t think you’re lying to me or withholding anything.”

“How many cars did they show you?”

“Just the one.”

Fritz reached behind the seat, brought out a file folder, and handed the folder to Ian.

“I want you to look at that. Names have been deleted from that that you didn’t need to see.”

Inside the file were official-looking documents marked secret. They purportedly pertained to the mission Fritz had completed that night two weeks earlier. Some parts were blacked out.

“There’s some pictures in there,” Fritz said.

“But what exactly happened?” Ian asked. “I don’t understand. We were so close.”

“Ian, I have never been to Nanna’s house. I do not know where it is. It could have been in the same area. I couldn’t take you there if my life depended on it.”

“I’m not trying to doubt you or anything, but, you know, it was scary. I just didn’t really know what to do. ’Course, I’ll stick to the story. I won’t tell them anything other than that we were camping.”

Fritz wanted him to go over everything the officers had asked and what he’d told them. Ian did.

“They asked me if I wanted to change my story,” Ian said. “I said no. They seemed a little hesitant just to leave it at that, but they didn’t ask me anything else.”

“They’re just fishing.”

“I remember you telling me I better get a little better control of my nerves, but I was just—I’m not good at this. The only reason I got any sleep last night was because of that pill you gave me. I did sleep very well.”

“How have those capsules been doing for you?” Fritz asked in his best bedside manner.

“They’ve been working pretty good. I’m not shaking.”

“I’ve got some Valium tablets for you, too,” Fritz said, taking the file Ian was holding. “I wish that had not had some stuff deleted, but you understand. At this point, you just do not need to know.”

Fritz withdrew some photographs and gave the file back. “These are the people who were in the house. They’re the ones who went down the other night. That’s the one I had to hit five times.”

“God,” said Ian, his voice filled with awe.

“The one with the hat is one of the big—”

“One of the big guys,” Ian put in.

“Yeah.”

“I told Chris I just wanted to see you a minute before we go back to tell you how the medication was doing,” Ian said.

Fritz was still showing pictures. “He was on the patio.”

“Which one did you use the knife on?”

“I used the knife on this guy, and I used the knife on…on this one because he was still showing signs.”

“I’m sorry to keep bothering you with all of this,” Ian said. “I hate to seem like a big chicken, but I just didn’t know how to deal with all of this.”

“Where
was
the house?” Fritz asked.

Ian explained, and Fritz drew a diagram showing that he had gone off on another street near the house.

“How many cars were there?” Fritz asked.

“Just a couple.”

“There should have been, unless Rob has picked the car up, there should have been three cars.”

Ian said he was so nervous that he’d thrown up the night before, and Fritz gave him some Valium.

“Are you still going to see them tomorrow?” Fritz asked, wanting to know about the polygraph test Ian had told him he was to take.

“I told them to delay it, postpone it indefinitely,” Ian said. “They didn’t seem too pleased, but they didn’t push it.”

“See, what they are figuring, that they can play mind games with you. They found very little physical evidence. In fact, nothing to connect anything to anything. See, they figured you’re the youngest—actually, it should make you mad—they figured if I was a pro, if I’d done something they weren’t going to get apeshit with me. They figured you’re the youngest, that you were the weak link, you were the one if there was anything to pick.”

“Well, I feel like I’m sort of letting Uncle Gerry down by getting so overworried about all this.”

“Well Ian, if I’d had any notion that anybody was going to, I mean, you talk about the luck of the draw. I almost shit in my pants about that.”

“I want to do the right thing,” Ian said. “I won’t crack. I don’t know if they’ll leave me alone after this, but I don’t think I’ll have any problems. You know, they tried to tell me you weren’t a doctor. ’Course, I didn’t believe that…”

Gentry slapped the dashboard of the car in which he was sitting behind a nearby convenience store. “Let
him
talk, Ian.”

“I know you’ve been in medical school,” Ian was going on. “I know you were doing your residency when Doctor died. Tried to tell me Annie Hill told them that.”

“Ian, the reason I have not started practice—I went to Duke—I told you, I’ve been doing stuff. I first got contacted when I was at Woodward and off and on over the years, when they check anything—when I went to Duke I was enrolled there, which is in the process of being straightened out now. When Dad died was an inopportune time.”

“They gave you your provisional license?”

“Oh, yeah. When I was traveling, see, I went to several meetings and places you don’t need to know about right now.”

“I don’t think I want to.”

“But when I was in school, it was better for all concerned that I wasn’t traceable back to Reidsville.”

“Let me ask you about this thing in Texas. I’m not going to have to do anything with that in the near future, are we?”

“No.”

“Good. Because I think it’s going to take a while to steel myself down to even think about this again—I feel a lot better now. I tell you that.”

“The car I had was a gold car,” Fritz said. “What type of car?”

“It looked like a Granada or a Monarch to me. I didn’t get that close to it.”

“The car I had was gold, but it wasn’t a Maverick. Something similar to a Maverick.”

Gentry realized immediately that Fritz had just contradicted himself, having earlier said the car he had was brown, and he was hoping Ian would catch it and call him on it, but Ian didn’t. Instead, Fritz gave Ian more papaverine. “Take one of these.”

“I’ll take ’em if I feel like I need to,” Ian said, remembering the stern admonitions from the officers that he was to swallow nothing that Fritz gave him, “but I don’t think I have anything to be nervous about.”

“Anytime they want to talk to you or anything like that, you take one of these. Give an hour for it to work.”

“How’s Susie and everybody taking the whole mess?” Ian asked.

“They’re numb. Susie’s just really—numb. Ian, what they’re trying to do is to get you to panic and say something. If I had been involved and they had something concrete to go on, they would already have done something about it.”

“I’m trying to imagine what kind of state I’d be in if I’d been there actually with you,” Ian said. “You know, had to help you. I’d probably be a pile of mush.”

“See, what they’re going on, supposedly a little while after dark, one of the neighbors at Nanna’s house heard the dogs barking and looked out and said there were two men standing on the lawn. They thought with all the workmen that it was just two workmen, so they brought the dogs inside and that was it. There may have
been
two men on the lawn.”

“Sergeant Gentry said that, uh—Florence, is it?”

“Florence.”

“That they had company that night, but I don’t remember what time he said they left.”

“I think it was before dark.”

Fritz mentioned that it wouldn’t be hard to arrange to find somebody who saw them on the mountain trail if they needed a stronger alibi.

“That’s cool,” Ian said.

“I wanted you to see this,” Fritz said, taking back the report, “so you’d have something to sink your teeth in. I know you trust me.”